Scorned Women

The Babysitter II

The next day, he forced himself to ask for her help in statistics. She didn't sit beside him, rather she just stood beside and leaned down when correcting something with her pen.

His eyes down to her sleeves. It must be the reason why all of her sleeves are tightly crossed around her wrists, none too loose. Now that she was so close to him, he can see the faint outline of powder around her eyes, something the girls call a concealer as far as he remembers. Her lips were always a pale pink color, but last night they bleed red.

"Do you get it now?" She asks meticulously.

"Yep." He pops the p.

"Alright then, just call me if there's something odd about the equations."

Yet as her feet were about to go out the door, he blasts her a statement. "What don’t I get is how you put up with everything that no one knows but you alone."

"huh?"

"Nothing." He retracts his words immediately much to her confusion.

Hayden repeated his routine from the night before, but instead of crazed sobs, he only sees her crying quietly on her bed, a bleeding arm above her head.

One wrong cut could end her life there, but she clearly doesn't want to make the room in someone else's house a murder scene.

He asked for her help again, and this time 'accidentally' grips one of her arms. His eyes follow the quick darkening of the fabric underneath when he removes his grip, but she doesn't acknowledge any sort of pain at all.

"I didn't expect my parents to hire a suicidal nanny." He breaks to her.

There was only a fleet of surprises, but she takes it off much to his frustration. "Well, I'm still alive don't worry."

The insinuation of her words creeped him out.

None of his brothers seem to notice. Because she was too perfect. Too sweet and two-faced.

He doesn't know how to handle things like her situation, because he doesn't even know how to handle himself.

He had removed his aggressiveness towards her since then. He admitted to himself, she was extremely useful to them and he isn't prepared on taking any sort of responsibility.

But it still comes up to him what could be the reason for her despair, boiling it down to family problems.

Then the burnout week came.

Hayden had never become so frustrated, enraged, and regretful of anything else when the news came to him. He had gone through it again and again in his early years, but why is he so pressed on these kinds of matter?

Items shattered in his room, sheets ripped, and furniture either broken or toppled over. The door remained open with Yanna only staring at him with concern, never moving from her position. He was sure his brothers had been sent to his relatives' house to sleep because there was no way they wouldn't hear his screams of rage around the house. She cleans his room by nighttime when he becomes too tired to smash things.

On the fifth day, he had just slid down on his floor, shoulder shaking as he screeched like a helpless pathetic child to his own description.

Yanna having sensed the end of his burnout, silently crossed the distance between them. She embraces him and he flinches, raising a hand. But he didn't hit her. Not when she's the only one who had put up with his insanity for months straight, not when she respected and understood him enough.

Her hand fleets through the tresses of his greased hair, and it brings more comfort to him for years. He can only lean on her body for support as his limbs ran out of energy to even struggle. She kisses his temple, muttering sweet things and reassurances of presence and life, the warmth in her embrace making him wish he forgets everything else but that.

She strips him halfway naked and washes his skin with a wet towel, letting him put on a cotton set of clothes. She took him to her room and lets him sleep on her soft bedding, drowning in her vanilla scent. He finds himself tucked into the bed and drinking a glass of warm milk, water, and vitamins, her crushing his pill into the milk and making him drink it whole before letting him drink the water. She lulls him to sleep with a simple song and caresses.

His dreams were blank, but it was comforting than the recent ones.

He wakes to the sound of someone shuffling around, finds her fixing a tray of lunch. He groggily realizes he wasn't in his own room, the heavyweight and swollen eyes from days of endless crying taking a toll on him.

"Good afternoon," she gently greets.

"W-what...?"

"I haven't finished cleaning yet because we need to replace a few pieces of furniture and bedding. Eat for a meanwhile, it's been days since you've eaten." She instructs.

He doesn't move away when she leans down and caresses his cheek, kissing his forehead softly before looking straight into his eyes with pleas.

"I won't force you to talk, but please don't destroy my room. You can take a walk in the garden for a breath of fresh air."

This time, he takes her words.

She brings him to the garden with his food, lets him sit at the gazebo. He faintly registers the cool air splashing his skin, the natural light of the day he has encountered a few years ago. He looks dazed at a white cat sitting across him on the table, eyeing him curiously. The fluffy white cat has a blue-collar around its neck, telling him it's a pet.

"Oh, her? She's Nirvana. The boys wanted a pet, but Mrs. Sian didn't want anything large in particular so I took one of our pets in the house." As if on instinct, the cat crawls to her outstretched hand, letting its head fall on the palm.

He only looks at the cat in envy, but the feline moves to one of his hands and rubs its head against his bandaged fingers, purring loudly.

"She likes you," Yanna gazed in admiration. "She never really liked any men older than a toddler's age, I saved her from being barbecued by my neighbor when I was in high school. Even my brothers have a hard time taming her."

"Really...?" He mumbles nonchalantly, tapping the cat's nose.

"I'll be doing last-minute adjustments to your room. It's too cluttered per se. If you need help, just call for me." She sets down a new phone on his desk.

He barely remembers breaking his phone in half, slamming it against the wall with so much force he watched the medium of his insanity crash into bits inside out.

"I don't really know if you like it, your phone is nearly five years old and the model's hard to find in the market last night so I got a new model for you."

Of course. That was the last gift he accepted from his parents.

Parents, if that's what he could even call.

She goes back inside the house, leaving him to ponder alone by the gazebo. He ate his food slowly, savoring the taste of the delicacy, sweet and sour to his taste buds and oozing with flavor when he cut into the meat. The cat purrs loudly to his side and he absentmindedly scratches the back of its ears and offers a piece, but it shakes its small furry head as if telling him it was full and only wanted his attention.

She returns an hour later, dressed in a more comfortable garb of a thin long skirt and a new loose top. This time, however, her hair falls into long waves down to her waist, thick and midnight black.

He had silently considered her beautiful from the first time he saw her. Perhaps there was another type of beauty he wasn't aware of that she carries.

"The restoration took time, if you want adjustments just tell me." She tells him.

"In one night and a morning?"

"I was already expecting when you started burning out on the first day and had done deliveries of the furniture and other materials. Those were just stocked at another room near mine."

He chuckles dryly. "As expected. You never really fail people do you."

"I failed my family."

Her soft answer makes him drop his utensils. He sets back and combs his fingers through his hair, eyes wide in disbelief of what's he's hearing. "I know I'm f****d up, but this is hilarious. You of all people?"

Then he sees it, the glow in her bright midnight eyes disappearing, replaced by a bottomless gaze that is only completed out of needed expectations. There was nothing else but exhaustion and the need to be in peace in those spherical mirrors.

The missing answer he had been looking for.

She tells him her story.

"I barely lived out of my mother's womb, my older sister Alyssa being the sole reason for my existence."

"I wasn't the firstborn of the family, something my parents desperately kept a secret since they moved here in the metro. Alyssa was my older sister of nearly ten years from my mother's first marriage. Both of my parents loved her, you see, she was the epitome of beauty, grace, and faith in our province. A complete opposite of mine who was born with skin darker than any of my parent's complexion." She narrates in nostalgia, a small smile.

"She was a religious girl, something that contrasted to my atheistic beliefs despite our parent's upbringing. I prided myself over accomplishments and everything else, my solace over the fact that only Alyssa will ever look at me as her treasure in our community. She took care of me,"

"My parents never liked my high dreams due to our social class. We were one of the poorest, and I wanted to change that. Only Alyssa was supportive enough, but I couldn't depend on her. I left our province with nothing more than a few hundred bills in my pockets when I was nine years old with my uncle and pursued my dream here."

"That's .... So young...but brave... "

"My parents didn't want to hear anything about me, only me and Alyssa communicated. With my intellect, I managed to skip a few grades and earn money through tutoring and being a vendor, taking scholarships to save so much of my money. When I turned 13, I managed to teach my uncle to learn another language and he successfully went overseas to work. I was already earning so much because people wanted me to become like their children, and I wanted my family to taste the luxury. I can still remember Alyssa when I brought her to the metro when she wanted to continue for high school, she looked so alive and happy to even take a bite of popcorn." She laughs, hollow and out of herself as she stares into a bush of blue daffodils.

Yet her eyes darkened, crushing a small flower between her fingertips.

"I was already studying as a freshman three years ago when it all ended. You see, it's no secret that I earned money through lots of means if that meant my family could taste the finest, I can provide. That included allowing my sister to study in a private high school, Santa Recoletos Severino Academy."

His jaw drops in memory. It was the same academy---

"--- that your brother, Ian Fortunato-Siansel studied."

A menacing scowl replaces her sweet expression, her jaw tightening as she gritted her teeth.

"Your sister and my brother were..."

"She was innocent, naive to fall for that lecher's charms. And your parents are fools for thinking that your brother remained more than half of his intelligence from primary school when he was using my sister as a scapegoat to escape failure."

"He played her like a f*****g fiddle, lured her, and danced her around. I had no trust in that asshole at all, I knew the works of a greedy man when I greed for accomplishments and the like. But my parents encouraged her to follow her dreams, telling me to stop being the villain in her story."

"Three years ago as I became a leading freshman, he had done her in, and he wanted no responsibility of the child she bears. He had the audacity to toss her away like limp trash, I've seen the texts, the calls and confirmed it from her friends. Bearing a child without marriage was the heaviest potluck of sin in the community she grew up in and molded her into. She tried to escape to the province, only to be met with disdain and disappointment. She pleaded with Ian to help but he blocked her, threatening to ruin her life. She hanged herself in her room."

His breath held up. He was aware of how much a bastard Ian is. The source of his misery. Then again, if Ian can make him miserable then what else of other people?

"My parents didn't know what to do with the triplets she birthed, they were heartbroken at the thought of losing their favorite daughter. They blamed me for bringing her to civilization, for bringing that bad luck to the family. For being the reason of her death." Bitterness swept on her tone.

"I didn't know what else to do. So, I kept up the facade. Yet no matter how many achieve, they wouldn't look past me. They always see Alyssa and no one else."

"When I came home, it was because my parents demanded me to return. They were saddened that I was staying at another's house for months' end, that I decided to pause my classes for the meanwhile, that I didn't want to talk to them anymore, that I see them as if they were nothing but strangers to me. They didn't listen to my explanation, and said that if Alyssa was alive, she will never treat them like how I treated them."

"I told them that Alyssa was dead, and they had no other daughter other than her. So why should I treat them like my parents anymore? Took them three years to notice."

She chuckles brokenly, hiccups breaking her laughter.

His eyes blanked.

"So you're here for revenge?" He questions painfully.

She stares at him coldly, her scowl breaking into a heartless cold grin.

He doesn't move away as she settles herself in his lap, hands brushing over her cheek as she leans close. He can smell her addictive vanilla scent, and he couldn't help but come closer as well until their noses touch. He can see a different way of warmth, cold but something special for him settled in her gaze straight to his soul.

"Revenge? When I've done and prepared for it years ago..." He becomes frazzled at her indication.

"That's why your parents took him out of the country, to escape him from the possible humility I can give him. Oh, with the power of the internet how it's easy to spread the texts and pictures... The rumors and everything else that no one knew was my fault..." She chuckles.

He remembered it as the reason why his parents took Ian out of the country three years ago because they didn't believe their "precious, kind-hearted innocent" firstborn could do such a thing. A mysterious file had been sent over suddenly to their house, and he can hear the gasps and arguments down below. He was never able to collect much, but he remembered it as ‘dangerously and convincingly falsifying’ to the bastard’s reputation according to his foolish parent’s descriptions.

"I heard he was returning this year for his drafting at basketball… and I wanted to see his misery up close... alas... The pandemic held it. Mr. and Mrs. Siancel give high salary though, I'll be grateful for that." He becomes aware of their position, they want in her eyes.

"I take care of people... But I don't do my service for free... The only thing I'll want from you is to man up... Aside from this 'man' of yours..." His breath hitches as her bottom rub against the hardness in his pants.

"I never expected to fall in love with his shut-in victimized brother..." The lust explodes in her eyes, and he can see months of pining, care, and controlled need to touch him while her fingers roam sensually across his chest.

"I'm not that bastard... I'm not his brother..." He grits.

"Of course, I'll never love a man who I'm not sure of."

He thinks he had done justice to his words.

But she explains to him what areas he would have to exert effort to leave the house while they had their brunch. It was a lot of instructions. He didn't mind it certainly, not when she's on his lap doing all the work while making him eat the pancakes with her mouth.

She takes the whole day to teach him simple tasks, washing the dishes, sweeping the floor, folding laundry. He knew he needed those simple skills in everything, not when he plans to leave the house. Cooking had been a little problem for him, he was only capable of extremely simple recipes --- courtesy of the fried food or boiled eggs.

But she was there to guide him, praising him and rewarding him with a quick lip-locked kiss He yearns for her attention.

How she convinced him to take therapy was another thing. He felt remorse in remembering the bruises he gave her, never forgetting to kiss her scars as an apology no matter how much she says it was fine. He knew he couldn't bear to stay with her if he can't control his actions, so he decided that maybe partaking in those funny therapy things can at least do something about his aggressiveness.

The triplets had been surprised when they were brought back home by their relatives, seeing him settled comfortably in the kitchen drinking coffee while watching Yanna cook. Clearly, they were unused to his existence, but he cared less about them.

He doesn’t need anybody else’s favor, only hers.

Nights on, he stared at his screen for a few minutes, taking in his online lectures with an impassive attitude. The night was settling in, but not his pile of submissions. In fact, they seem to grow more every passing hour. His teachers, just sending videos from the internet and making tons of submission requirements.

He leans back into his chair, even more, to let gravity pull closer to his body, her face tucked on his shoulder and silently sleeping, warm air wafting around his collar. He wasn’t bothered by her weight on him, he craved it.

It has become their nightly routine. Days that tick closer to the time he curses so much are days she pampers him with no stopping.

The air travel ban was lifted, and he dreaded the moment he hears the familiar nostalgic sound of a red Lamborghini parked inside the garage of the house. They were here to ruin his life once again. Soft hands caressed his arms up to his shoulders, a familiar telltale whisper of a devil in his ears.

“Don’t worry.” He relents to the voice, easing the tension in him.

Yanna greets his parents with a small smile, and then there was him. The man that rooted his fears, nightmares, and riddance from the beginning. Ian had this audacity, the sense of pathetic pride to smile so devilishly charming and convincing.

They had been surprised to find him at the living room, after all, rarely does their hobo come out of his room looking like freshly bathed and clean-shaven, well-nourished like a prize cattle with his flexing muscles and what else different.

“Hey bro!” He stiffens at the decorum presented, but there was it. The smug look in those twin-like eyes mirrored his.

“I have to finish some presentations,” Hayden informs none of them but Yanna who nods.

The moment his door closed; hell descended in their household.

|||||||||||||||||||

Hayden takes out a small packet from the back of the fridge, eyes weary and senses heightened to the maximum in the middle of darkness. He remembers his lessons very well. The white powder fumes up in the little clear bag, and ever so carefully he dips a gloved finger into the packet and coats his finger lightly. In a few seconds, he encircles the dipped limb around a couple of glasses and stirs very minimal amounts into the juice and water concentrates in the fridge.

His headcounts down to the final twenty seconds and he silently leaves the kitchen.

Morning came and he was laying down on his bed as he hears the overexcited bragging of his doofus brother downstairs. He has no choice but to go downstairs and get food himself, Yanna wasn’t in the house anymore, her job was done. For them that is. He shifts to underneath his new bedding and clasps a familiar very thin hinge as he feels his palm against the surface. With a swipe of a little card, it opens to a new deck, and inside are his supplies of food for at least two months, a miniature portable cooking stove for him to rely on as well.

He calls her over the phone and tells her he loves her, he misses her. She responds the same, telling him everything will be alright.

On some weekly intervals, Ian finds the nerve to disturb him in his room, speaking behind the door.

“How’s my pathetic accidental newborn doing? Still being useless?”

Hayden just scoffs, not answering. That’s how everything goes ever since he started his therapy.

Then the weeks of torment started turning out more obvious with his ignorance. Often, he wakes up to louder taunts and temptations past his door.

“Come out there, you hobo! You stink in there!”

The weekly nuisance starts decreasing intervals, becoming every three or four days.

“Hayden come out there you pathetic piece of s**t!”

Hayden smiles through the video call, Yanna raising a brow at his sudden distraction over his math tutorial. He waves it off as another episode of arguments. He has learned how to mute selective noises in his surroundings, and that includes the changes of the once quiet household on a daily round of arguments.

“Ian why are you suddenly suspended from the league?!”

“SHUT UP YOU b***h!”

“IAN!”

It’s annoying though, that’s on Hayden’s thoughts as he opens the door again nightly for his younger siblings to come in, the toddlers trembling and afraid.

He despised his family, but not the triplets who were just so unlucky to be born in a chaotic household.

“Him?” He muses to the set of arguments becoming increasingly louder from downstairs.

They nodded, teary and he lets them in. He makes them sleep with him, covering them with his blanket. He wakes to his mother knocking on the door, asking them to come downstairs to eat breakfast. He rejects the forlorn expression of his exhausted sleepless mother, telling them he’s already full.

Sometimes it’s not Mrs. Siancel knocking, it’s worn-out,  Ian.

“What the hell do you want?”

“Cash, 5,000.”

Hayden’s eyes nearly blow out at the charge. “What the f**k? I get no f*****g lunch money here in the house! Go ask mother!” He slams the door to the furious man’s face.

On a particular night, however, it changes.

Newscasters flocked left and right to the gates; police scattered around the vicinity as they held their breaths. The stars weren’t enough lights, cameras provided the lighting flashing everywhere at the bloody ransacked homestead. Yanna traverses past the crowd of curious bystanders of the neighborhood, running through the unneeded audience. “HAYDEN!” She screams, catching some people’s attention.

“Do you know the family, Miss?” The lieutenant asks of her.

“I tutor the middle child, Hayden Cancel.” She gasps out, looking everywhere and struggling against the vice grip on her form.

“We can’t let you mess with the crime scene madam, he’s on his way to the nearest hospital twenty meters from here.” He informs the distraught young woman.

She immediately turns on her heel and climbs on her bike, kickstarting the engine to life to dash down the dark lane to the near city.

For the next few days, however, the dark road is barely lit by a mellow light, giving way to several people who came forward to pay their respects or simply do a nosy documentary of the highlight reel of the year.

“A crazed young man at the influence of opioids murdered his nearly entire family in cold blood…”

“Police found a suitcase of years’ worth of evidence of Ian Fortunato-Siancel’s cover-ups of his s****l harassment and participation in fraternity hazing…”

“The high school and university are now in question whether the prestige that the oldest Siancel had was legitimate…”

“… I couldn’t believe it… he’s the reason why his younger brother has anger issues….”

“The team that dropped Siancel suddenly from the draft picking admitted that the medical examinations registered crazy amount of steroids and cocaine in the bloodstream of the supposed promising power forward….”

“Racking up in tens and thousands of debts to loan sharks and the like to support his lavish drugged lifestyle, he resorted to stealing off from his parents’ own money…”

“… According to the family psychologist, the younger Siancel had been repeatedly telling him that the eldest child was a psychopath and the root of his misery…”

“A two-faced demon in disguise indeed as titled by the public…”

 “… the toddlers narrated that the start of the murder was due to Erick Siancel’s accusation of his eldest son’s thievery that blew up into a huge argument…”

“Luckily, the shut-in and true victim of Ian Siancel, Hayden Fortunato-Siancel had been in the midst of an overnight tutorial when the murder spree happened….”

“The former nanny of the family had clips of the young Siancel’s outbursts and problems, involving traumatizing experiences with Ian…”

“Traces of cocaine were all over the house, the majority found in Erick Siancel’s bedroom…”

“… the triplets and Hayden’s blood were found laced with extremely small amounts of cocaine, presumably from living in the same household and using the same eating utensils with their brother…”

“… In joy yet unfortunate misgivings, Hayden Fortunato-Siancel has awakened from his ten-day comatose state after a near-death experience of being hacked to death…”

“In this episode of Shanebridge Unsolved, we look into the harrowing detail….”

“Darling?”

The young woman pauses the video, looking down at the dazed stare of her husband, his head lodged in between her breasts, suffocating himself much to her grimace.

“Yeah?”

“hmmmfrffmmm…”

“Hayden, take your head out of my chest I don’t understand you, don’t use them as mufflers.”

The well-off rich pharmaceutical chemist grumbles and obeyed, leaning down to her cleavage. “I was saying that the boys wanted to go to that wizard themed park for their upcoming birthday,”

“The six of them? Aren’t they in high school and university?”

“Well, they’re clearly bonding through that answer… mise well we go for it.”

Yanna sifts her hand through his thick locks, making him come closer to her touch but she halts his incoming gesture. “No, I just gave birth. Two weeks more before we can go for it.”

“Shouldn’t you be getting sleep considering how our baby’s f*****g up our sleep schedule?” He murmured, nipping her finger gently.

“It’s almost three am, our baby would wake in twenty minutes or so as I expect. I’m just killing time.”

“You’re seriously inhumane…” His eyes fall back to a drowsy state before closing entirely.

She sighs, returning to the video on hand.

“… of the burning of the Willowin village; a small, secluded area that has been preserved by tradition and Catholicism until years later…”